The Manchurian Candidate (16 page)

In July, 1956, at about nine-twenty on a hot night for most New Yorkers, Raymond was reasonably cool as he sat before his opened French windows just inside the small balcony that was cleared by a strong breeze which had bowled down the Hudson River Valley. He was reading Le Compte and Sundeen’s
Unified French Course,
because he had decided he would like to work directly from the notes of Brillat-Savarin and Escoffier during his recreational cooking periods, a new interest that had come to him since the many pleasant evenings when he had assisted so many expert you
ng women in making so many different kinds of spaghetti sauce.

The telephone, on the desk beside his chair, rang. He picked it up.

“Raymond Shaw, please.” It was a pleasant male voice with an indefinite accent.

“This is he.”

“Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”

“Yes, sir.” Raymond disconnected. He burrowed through the desk drawers until he found playing cards. He shuffled the cards carefully and began to play. The queen of diamonds did not show up until the third layout. The telephone rang again forty minutes later as Raymond was smoking and watching the queen on top of the squared deck.

“Raymond?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Can you see the red queen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you carry an accident insurance policy?”

“No, sir.”

“Then tomorrow you will apply through the insurance department of your newspaper. Take all the standard benefits on a replacement income of two hundred dollars per week for total disability for as long as you have to be away from your job. Also take hospital insurance.”

“The paper carries that for me, sir.”

“Good. One week from next Saturday, on the fourteenth of July, you will report at eleven-ten
A.M.
to the Timothy Swardon Sanitarium at 84 East Sixty-first Street. We want you here for a check-up. Is it clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Good night, Raymond.”

“Good night, sir.” The connection was discontinued. Raymond went back to Le Compte and Sundeen. He drank a bottle of Coca-Cola. He went to bed at eleven o’clock after a sensible shower, and slept dreamlessly. He breakfasted on figs and coffee, arrived at his desk at nine forty-five, and called the personnel department immediately and made the arrangements for the insurance, naming in the life clause his only friend, Ben Marco, as beneficiary of fifty thousand dollars if his death occurred by accident or by violence.

Senator Iselin’s office forwarded a personal letter addressed to Raymond, care of the senator, to the newspaper office in New York. It was postmarked Wainwright, Alaska. Raymond opened it warily and read:

Dear Sarge:

I had to say this or write this to somebody because I think I am going nuts. I mean, I have to say it or write it to somebody who knows what I’m talking about not just anybody and you was my best friend in the army so here goes. Sarge I am in trouble. I’m afraid to go to sleep because I have terrible dreams. I don’t know about you but with me dreams sometimes have sounds and colors and these dreams have a way everything gets all speeded up and it can scare you. I guess you must be wondering about me going chicken like this. The dream keeps coming back to me every time I try to get to sleep. I dream about all the guys on the patrol where you won the Medal for saving us and the dream has a lot of Chinese people
in it and a lot of big brass from the Russian army. Well, it is pretty rough. You have to take my word for that. There is a lot of all kind of things goes on in that dream and I need to tell about it. If you should hear from anybody else on the Patrol who writes you that they are having this kind of a dream I will appreciate if you put them in touch with me. I live in Alaska now and the address is on the envelope. I have a good plumbing business going for me here and I’ll be in good shape if these dreams don’t take too much of the old zing out of me. Well, sarge, I hope everything goes good with you and that if you’re ever around Wainwright, Alaska, you’ll give me a holler. Good luck, kid.

Your old corporal,
Alan Melvin

Raymond had himself reread one part of the letter and he stared at that with distaste and disbelief. It offended him so that he read it and read it again: “you was my best friend in the army.” He tore the letter across, then in quarters, then again. When he could no longer tear it smaller, he dropped the pieces into the wastebasket beside his desk.

Eight

FOR THREE YEARS AFTER TAKING THE OATH OF
office as United States Senator in March, 1953, Johnny had been moved slowly by Raymond’s mother to insure acceptance within the Senate and in official Washington, to learn to know all of the press gentlemen well, to arrange the effective timing for the start of his run for re-election; in short, to master the terrain. It seems almost impossible now to credit the fact that, halfway through his first time in office, Johnny Iselin was still one of the least-known members of the Senate. It was not until April, 1956, that Raymond’s mother decided to try out the first substantial issue.

On the morning of April 9, Johnny showed up at the press briefing room at the Pentagon to attend a regularly scheduled press conference of the Secretary of Defense. He walked into the conference with two friends who represented Chicago and Atlanta papers respectively. They had had coffee first. Johnny had asked th
em elaborately what they were up to that morning. They told him they were due at the Secretary’s regular weekly press conference at eleven o’clock. Johnny said wistfully that he had never seen a really big press conference in action. He was such an obscure, diffident, pleasant, whisky-tinted little senator that one of them good-naturedly invited him to come along and thereby unwittingly won himself a $250 prize bonus, three weeks later, from his newspaper.

Johnny was so lightly regarded at that time, although extremely well known to all the regulars covering the Washington beat, that if he was noticed at all, no one seemed to think it a bit unusual that he should be there. However, immediately after the press conference writers who had not been within five hundred miles of Washington that morning claimed to have been standing beside Johnny when he made his famous accusation. Editorialists, quarterly-magazine contributors, correspondents for foreign dailies, and all other trend tenders used up a lot of time and wood pulp and, collectively, earned a lot of money writing about that extraordinary morning when a senator chose to cry out his anguish and protest at a press conference held by the Secretary of Defense.

The meeting, held in an intimate amphitheater that had strong lights for the newsreel and television cameras, and many seats for correspondents, opened in the expected manner as the Secretary, a white-haired, florid, terrible-tempered man, strode on stage to the lectern flanked by his press secretaries and read his prepared statement concerned with that week’s official view of integration of the nation’s military and naval and air forces into one loyal unit. When he
had finished he inquired into the microphones with sullen suspicion whether there were any questions. There were the usual number of responses from those outlets instructed to bait the Secretary, as was done in solemn rotation, to see if he could be goaded into one of his outrageous quotes that were so contemptuous of the people as to not only sell many more newspapers but to give all of the arid columnists of think pieces something significant to write about. The Secretary did not rise to the bait. As the questions came in more slowly he began to shuffle his feet and shift his weight. He coughed and was making ready to escape when a loud voice, tremulous with moral indignation but brave with its recognition of duty, rang out from the center of the briefing room.

“I have a question, Mr. Secretary.”

The Secretary peered forward with some irritation at this stranger who had seen fit to take his own slow time about getting to his stupid question. “Who are you, sir?” he said sharply, for he had been trained into politeness to the press by a patient team of wild horses and by many past dislocations, which had been extremely painful, resulting from getting his foot caught in his mouth.

“I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin, sir!” the voice rang out, “and I have a question so serious that the safety of our nation may depend upon your answer.” Johnny made sure to shout very slowly so that, before he had finished, every newspaperman in the room had located him and was staring at him with the expectant lust for sensation which was their common emotion.

“Who?” the Secretary asked incredulously, his voice electronically amplified, making it sound like the mating call of a giant owl.

“No evasions, Mr. Secretary,” Johnny yelled. “No evasions, if you please.”

The Secretary owned a tyrant’s temper and he had been one of the most royal of big business dynasts before he had become a statesman. “Evasions?” he roared. “What the hell are you talking about? What kind of foolishness is this?” That sentence alone, those few words all by themselves, served to alienate the establishment called the United States Senate from sympathy with his cause for the rest of his tenure in office for, no matter what the provocation, it is the first unwritten law of the United States of America that one must never, never, never speak to a senator, regardless of his committee status, in such a manner before the press.

The members of the press present, who now recognized Johnny in his official status, grew lightheaded over the implications of this head-on encounter of two potentially great sellers of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television time. It was one of those pulsing moments auguring an enormous upward surge in profits, when one-half of the jaded-turned-thrilled stamped out their cigarettes and the other half lighted up theirs; all staring greedily.

“I said I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin and I hold here in my hand a list of two hundred and seven persons who are known to the Secretary of Defense as being members of the Communist party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the Defense Department.”

“Whaaaaat?” The Secretary had to shout out his astonishment into the microphones to be heard over the excited keening and rumbling of the voices in the room.

“I demand an answer, Mr. Secretary!” Johnny cried, waving a clutch of papers high over his head, his voice a silver trumpet of righteousness.

The Secretary had turned from beet-red to magenta. He was breathing with difficulty. He gripped the lectern before him as though he might decide to throw it at Johnny. “If you have such a list, Senator, goddammit,” he bellowed, “bring it up here. Give me that list!”

“There will be no covering up, Mr. Secretary. You will not put your hands on this list. I regret deeply to say in front of all of these men and women that you no longer have my confidence.”

“Whaaaaat?”

“This is no longer a matter for investigation by the Department of Defense. I am afraid you have had your chance, sir. It has become the responsibility of the United States Senate.” Johnny turned and strode from the room, leaving chaos behind him.

On the following day, consistent with a booking made weeks previously and involving a token “expenses” payment of $250, Johnny was to appear on Defenders of Our Liberty, a television program that was a showcase for the more conservative members of the government; an interview show on which questions of a nonstraightforward nature were asked before a national audience representing one of the lowest ratings of any program in the history of the medium, the program remaining on the air only because the sponsoring company found it generally useful and, of course, pleasant to be able to dine with the important weekly guests, following each show, when a special vice-president would make firm friends with them to continue the discussion of government problems and problems with government of a more or less specific nature over the years to come.

Johnny had been invited to appear on the show because he was one of the two senators
remaining in office whom the company’s special vice-president had never had to dinner, and the special vice-president was not one to underestimate.

However, on the day of his scheduled appearance, Johnny was the hottest statesman in the country as a result of thirty hours of continuous coverage and he had become an object of great importance to the television show and to its network. Wherever they could, in the extremely short time they had in which to turn around, they bought half-page advertisements in big city newspapers to herald Johnny’s live appearance on the show.

Raymond’s mother let everything develop in a normal manner, up to a point. Johnny was due to go on the air at seven-thirty
P.M.
At one
P.M.
she told them regretfully that he would not be available, that he was too busy preparing what would be the most important investigation the Senate had ever held. The network reeled at this news. The sponsor reeled. The press prepared to reel. After only the least perceptible stagger the special vice-president asked that a meeting between Raymond’s mother and himself be quickly and quietly arranged. Raymond’s mother preferred to hold this kind of a meeting in a moving car, far away from recording devices. She drove herself, and the two of them rode around the city of Washington and hammered out an agreement that guaranteed Johnny “not less than six nor more than twelve” appearances on Defenders of Our Liberty each year for two years at the rate of $7500 worth of common stock of the sponsoring company per appearance, and for which Johnny would supply the additional consideration of “staying in the news” in such a manner as could be reviewed after every three shows by the special vice-president and Raymond’s mother jointly, to
the point where the contract could be canceled or extended, by mutual consent.

Therefore, Johnny was most certainly on hand to face the fearle
ss panel of five newspapermen before the television cameras at seven-thirty that eve
ning. The developments and charges of the previous day were lai
d on all over again, with one substantial difference concerning the actual number of
Communists in the Defense Department. What follows is an excerpt from the record of the telecast: